In the 20 years since their debut Young Team, Mogwai have dabbled in nearly every form of alternative music, including most recently with full-blown electronica in 2014’s Rave Tapes and last year’s exceptional soundtrack album Atomic. For this, their ninth studio album, they not only return to their former producer Dave Fridmann for the first time since 2001’s Rock Action, but they also masterfully recapture their post-rock glory days. However, this is not an album that looks backwards. Instead, Every Country’s Sun looks to revitalise, restore and re-package everything that Mogwai have ever stood for.

Beginning with the sublime ‘Coolverine’, the album soars straightaway. Almost funky in its rhythm, even to the point of a slight hip-hop beat, it builds deceptively from a melancholy opening into the trademark Mogwai sound explosion. By the close, everything has been turned up to 13 with each instrument competing for space and sound like triffids in a jungle. ‘Party In The Dark’ then takes a complete left turn, as we have (gasp) a straightforward indie-rock song. Sounding for all the world like New Order covering Mogwai (or perhaps vice versa), there are even choruses and verses. Guitarist, and now vocalist, Stuart Braithwaite has hinted that the album has been inspired by the recent global turmoils, and as he sings: “I see everything, all that suffering” it seems that he is taking an omnipotent view of the world. This is the most conventional, and thus unconventional by their standards, song that the band have ever produced, and it works.

From there, we are onboard a train that stops off at every theme and genre that Mogwai have ever dabbled in. ‘Brain Sweeties’ could be another soundtrack piece with its dramatic, brooding synths over Martin Bulloch’s pounding drums feeling like the denouement to a gritty thriller. ‘Crossing the Road Material’ contains one of the most heart-swelling moments that you will find on any album this year as a guitar solo takes flight, while the atmospheric synths of ‘Aka 47’ recall Brian Eno at his best before another haunting guitar piece kicks in. However, it is on the second half of the album that the classic quiet/loud dynamic truly kicks in for the first time. ’20 Size’ sounds as dark and menacing as anything they have ever produced, with its tidal wave of noise that rushes over everything in its path. Like a passive-aggressive drunk in a bar who has had at least two too many, when the crash and chaos of ‘Don’t Believe The Fife’ unfolds, it comes from nowhere. With gently melancholic synths lapping alongside a simple drum beat, it is a beautifully meandering piece of work that suddenly collides with the sort of crashing and thrilling guitar work that most other bands simply aren’t capable of. By the final eponymous track, they have gone stratospheric with a piece of work that wraps everything that has come before it into five and a half truly sensational minutes. It is equally jaw-dropping and tear-jerking, capable of inducing mass air guitars and air drums.

As Mogwai now enter their third decade of recording albums, Every Country’s Sun represents that absolute rarest of beasts: a band that is not just comfortable looking back at what has defined them, but also willing and able to push on into new soundscapes. A must for the purist and for the curious, for new fans and for old. Revitalised and restored, this band continues to dazzle.

Jamie MacMillan

Website – mogwai.co.uk
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